Nursing home expenditures are a rapidly growing share of national health care spending with the government functioning as the dominant payer of services. Public insurance for nursing home care is tightly targeted on income and assets, which imposes a major tax on savings; moreover, low state...

The strong negative correlation over time between smoking rates and obesity have led some to suggest that reduced smoking is increasing weight gain in the U.S.. This conclusion is supported by the findings of Chou et al. (2004), who conclude that higher cigarette prices lead to increased body...

Interest in religious organizations as providers of social services has increased dramatically in recent years. Churches in the U.S. were a crucial provider of social services through the early part of the twentieth century, but their role shrank dramatically with the expansion in government...

This is the introduction to and summary of Phase III of an international research project to study the relationship between social security provisions and retirement. The project relies on the work of a large group of economists in 12 countries who conduct the analysis for each of their...

Previous research has convincingly shown that abortion legalization in the early 1970s led to a significant drop in fertility at that time. But this decline may have either represented a delay in births from a point where they were have represented a permanent reduction in fertility. We combine...

We use data from the March 1968-2001 Current Population Surveys to document the evolution of elderly poverty over this time period, and to assess the causal role of the Social Security program in reducing poverty rates. We develop an instrumental variable approach that relies on the large...

One approach to covering the uninsured that is frequently advocated by policy makers is subsidizing the employee portion of employer-provided health insurance premiums. But, since the vast majority of those offered employer-provided health insurance already take it up, such an approach is only...

We explore the fiscal implications of reforms to the Canadian retirement income system by decomposing the fiscal effect of reforms into two components. The mechanical effect captures the change in the government's budget assuming no behavioral response to the reform. The second component is the...

This is the introduction to and summary of the second stage of a international research project to study the relationship between social security provisions and retirement. The project relies on the analyses of a large group of economists in 12 countries who conduct the analysis for each of...

We investigate the effect of health insurance coverage on the decision of individuals to apply for Disability Insurance (DI). Those who qualify for DI receive public insurance under Medicare, but only after a two-year waiting period. This raises concerns that many disabled are going uninsured...